Representatives of the Police, the Office for Corruption of Senior Officials (CIO) and the presidential security service met this Tuesday to try to coordinate the execution of a new attempt arrest from President Yoon Suk-yeolafter the failure at the beginning of the month.
The meeting occurs amid speculation that the anti-corruption office investigating the president, removed for his short-lived imposition of martial law, will carry out a new arrest attempt this week, now with the collaboration of the presidential security service.
The first attempt to execute the arrest warrant imposed on Yoon failed on the 3rd, after presidential security prevented officials from the anti-corruption office and dozens of police officers from accessing the president’s residence in a tense confrontation that lasted several hours, before the operation was canceled.
The PSS agreed to participate in the meeting after receiving a letter from the Police the day before, asking for their collaboration in the matter and warning of legal consequences for any obstruction, and the possibility of being stripped of their official status and being sanctioned not to return. to occupy positions of that type.
The South Korean authorities are preparing a new device to try to arrest the president, in which Up to 1,000 troops could participateafter a Seoul court extended the detention order last week.
Yoon is believed to have been hiding in his residence since he was impeached by the National Assembly on December 14. After the first failed arrest attempt, the PSS reinforced the premises with barbed wire, barricades or lining up buses to make passage difficult, which is why there is speculation about the type of assets, from helicopters to armored vehicles, that the police could be deployed in a second operation. The reinforcement has also raised concerns about the potential physical confrontation between law enforcement, the PSS and thousands of protesters for and against the president who have been gathering in front of the place for weeks.
This meeting of the security forces takes place on the same day that the first formal hearing of the trial is scheduled to be held in the Constitutional Court to determine whether Yoon’s dismissal will be final or not in relation to his fleeting declaration of martial law. in December. The president is not expected to appear. Yoon’s lawyers have requested a judicial annulment of the arrest warrant, arguing that only the Prosecutor’s Office, and not the anti-corruption office, can request an arrest for an alleged crime of insurrection, the only one from which a South Korean president is not immune. .
